NEW YORK — The words came from the Jack Coffey Field press box with a full-throated fury.

"That spit is on you! You're a senior quarterback! Act like it!"

Michael Nebrich had just thrown a lousy pass into the middle of the field picked off by Sacred Heart's Alec Finelli in the second quarter of this FCS first-round playoff game. Nebrich, the quarterback who drove out of Storrs in 2012 and never looked back, put on the headset and, yes, those were the words he heard from offensive coordinator Andrew Breiner, although Breiner actually used a barnyard phrase that rhymes with spit.

The words rattled the walls and rattled in Nebrich's ears.

"Our coaches don't ever stop coaching us," Nebrich said after he passed for 423 yards and four touchdowns, including a 97-yard strike to another UConn refugee named Tebucky Jones Jr., in a 44-22 rout that pushed Fordham into the round of 16 against New Hampshire. "Like you heard, he got on me pretty good. It was a Day 1 mistake by me, a mistake I never should make and I made it. Coach isn't going to say, 'Hey, it's OK. Get 'em next time.'"

This is not the Michael Nebrich who left UConn before his sophomore season. He said he weighs only 10 pounds more, but he has filled out physically and he has filled out emotionally. Yet in a profound way, his head coach Joe Moorhead says, Nebrich is now more like the guy who threw for all those record-breaking yards as a high school kid in Virginia and put him in the same statistical sentence as Michael Vick.

Nebrich has a swagger now.

"I saw that swagger in high school," Moorhead said. "This is the kid I recruited, and if you ask his high school coach [Jim Poythress] and guys down there, they will certainly agree that the one personality trait Michael doesn't lack is confidence."

As a college freshman, Nebrich seemed like a kid among young men. He had personality and talent but clearly he was green in national flag blue and just as clearly Paul Pasqualoni, who did not recruit Nebrich, wanted to turn to a junior college transfer named Chandler Whitmer in 2012. Now Nebrich is the guy who sits down at the press conference, sees that his coach isn't around, and asks the media, "Where's Joe?" Nebrich is the guy who spends hours going over video with Breiner, game plans with him throughout the week and doesn't play mind games with him in the middle of games. They put it all out there. He's also the kind of quarterback who has some folks wondering what he might be able to do in pro ball.

"Michael and I talk about the difference between confidence and cockiness," Moorhead said. "Some guys haven't earned the right to be a leader and what Michael has done, on and off the field, has allowed him to play with a tremendous amount of confidence."

When he left Storrs in his pickup truck and headed south on I-95, Nebrich had intended to visit another former UConn offensive coordinator, Rob Ambrose, the head coach at Towson. He pulled over in the Bronx first to meet with Moorhead, who had recruited him to UConn under Randy Edsall. He left Fordham and kept driving home to Virginia, never stopping at the Maryland exit for Towson. What happened?

"I told him the truth," Moorhead said. "Michael and I have a very close, tight relationship. Me leaving UConn was tough on a lot of different levels, but particularly with the relationship I had developed with Michael and some of the guys. I told him, 'Very few times in life do you get a second chance and we have an opportunity here to finish the things we didn't at UConn.' I told him he'd have an opportunity to get a fantastic education and play in the offense he was recruited to play in."

Nebrich threw for 4,380 yards last season and 35 touchdowns in 13 games. Missing two games after an appendectomy, Nebrich has thrown for 3,438 yards and 29 touchdowns in 11 games this season. Ranked third in the FCS in passing efficiency, Nebrich set school records with six touchdown passes and 566 yards passing against Penn on Nov. 14.

"I've never stopped following the [UConn] program, seeing the stuff that has gone on there, the different coaching changes," said Nebrich, who proved it by pointing out the recent departures of Jefferson Ashiru and Kamal Abrams. "I don't know exactly what made me want to leave, but it's huge that I did. Coach Moorhead was a huge part of me going there and once I came down here and met with him, it was an easy decision."

"Obviously, [wondering if he could have made it big at the FBS level] is something I think about," Nebrich said. "But I'm here and I am making the most of everything. The talent I have at the wide reciever position down here is just as good as I would have at UConn."

Fordam took a 14-0 lead in the first five minutes on touchdown strikes by Nebrich of 1 yard to Jones and 50 yards to Brian Wetzel. Sacred Heart carried play for the next 20 minutes. Special team gaffes would haunt the Pioneers. How many times do you see a blocked field goal, blocked extra point and two snaps over the punter's head by a freshman snapper in one game? Not in a long time, Sacred Heart coach Mark Nofri allowed.

Moorhead estimated that Sacred Heart blitzed 75 percent of the game. Yet it was the way that Nebrich rebounded after that interception that was impressive. He closed out the first half with a perfectly thrown ball over Preston Sanford to Wetzel in the corner of the end zone for a 14-yard touchdown pass. Wetzel was getting a lot of man coverage, Nebrich said, and he wanted the football. Presto! He got it. Nebrich opened the second half with a 97-yard strike to Jones. They had seen Jones with leverage late in the first half and discussed it at halftime. A 17-16 game sbecame 31-16.

"You don't really expect a team to take a shot from the 3," Nebrich said. "It was pretty awesome."

He clearly has flourished under Moorhead, a creative offensive mind, a man with terrific perspective, one who'll cite Abraham Lincoln to his players. He also is a coach who has won 23 of 27 games and deserves a shot to run an FBS program. Moorhead's not a tough guy, yet after that blast from Breiner he was quick to add, "We're not going to accept mediocrity and say it's OK.

"Michael has always been blessed with tremendous physical skills. The biggest growth the last three years has been he and coach Breiner have been working on the mental aspect, the game within the game. You've got to have short memory at that position. You can't go in the tank. Understand what you did wrong. Correct it. Move on. Michael's one of the best players in the country and he played like it today."

We will never know how good Nebrich would have been at UConn. We do know this much. The Storrs quarterback carousel, so many names, so many misses, has led to so much frustration.

"A lot of teams and a lot of coaches don't really give the chance for the guy to grow," Nebrich said. "All are going to have growing pains. A lot of coaches don't allow for those growing pains. They'll have the quick hook. The quarterbacks that last three-four years start out with growing pains but they had a chance to get better. You see a lot of teams that don't give the quarterback a real chance to be successful and, unfortunately, that's what you've seen at UConn the last three-four years."

Ouch.

After UConn lost to Army at Yankee Stadium, a game that he watched, Nebrich tweeted that he couldn't wait to put up more points than the Huskies.

"And we did," Nebrich said. "We didn't get the win, unfortunately. It was a joking around thing. I still have a couple friends on the team."

As Moorhead said, he doesn't lack for confidence, and that spreads to the next opponent.

"New Hampshire obviously is a very good team, the No. 1 seed for a reason," Nebrich said. "We've watched some film on them so far and they're a vulnerable team.